Like this:

Grani.ru reports (translation below, original carries 42 comments in Russian) on moves to sanction Russia in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. If that happens, the Russians are threatening to withdraw from it altogether.

This presents an interesting conundrum. On the one hand, the Russians deserve to be thrown out of most anything; one the other, some of these international gatherings are of some – usually pathetically little – use in reining in Russia’s worst abuses.

The world has gaped in slack-jawed horror at the photographs of a young Iranian woman lying on the streets of Tehran after being gunned down by the cowardly goons of the terrorist-supporting Islamic fundamentalist regime because she dared to offer a peaceful protest to their most recent “election” sham. The world, that is, except for Russia.

With all the contempt we can muster, we condemn the wanton savagery that has led Russia to side with the maniacal, murderous Islamic radicals in Iran against the valiant citizens who march in support of justice. By standing mute as their government stands alone against all the other members of the G-8 to support the Iranian regime’s brutal campaign of homicide against peaceful demonstrators, the people of Russia are as blameworthy as that government. We condemn them.

Not long ago, Russophiles were strutting and preening and bragging about their clever ploy to bribe Kyrgyzstan with $2 billion to boot the United States out of its military base in that tiny former Soviet republic.

Oops. Last week came news that Kyrgyzstan was doing no such thing, and would pocket Russia’s largesse whilst accepting triple the former U.S. rent to allow the Americans to stay as long as they like. The Russians, fuming and sputtering in a most pathetic and neo-Soviet manner, are left with mucho eggski on their faces.

Where its military policy is concerned these days, Russia finds itself between a rock and a hardened nuclear missile silo.

On the one hand, Russia would like to rely more on nuclear weapons than conventional armies. The former are much less expensive and much easier to control. Ballistic missiles don’t humiliate you by cutting of each other’s genitals and such, and they don’t have to be fed three times a day. The Russian economy is in abject freefall, and the Kremlin is simply running out of funds to pay the massive overhead of the neo-Red Army. It’s already been forced to cut thousands of officers from the payroll, as if it were engaged in nothing more than corporate downsizing.

But to rely on nuclear weapons means getting involved in a technology race, an innovation race, a creative thinking and productivity race, with the United States of America. Russia would have a huge amount of trouble winning those kinds of races with the United States of Armenia, much less with the most vibrant and progressive industrial society on the planet. It’s a daunting prospect, to say the least. Whereas, although you’re supposed to feed your soldiers, if you don’t really want to to you don’t actually have to. The Soviet Union sure didn’t, for instance, and it managed to go on for decades like that. If you don’t improve your nuclear missiles, however, they become obsolete, especially if you can’t overcome inferior technology with sheer numbers.

Like this:

One of the very most under-reported critical facts about Russia is the total lack of Internet access available to the country’s general population, which remains in the dark ages. Thus, claims about freedom on Russia’s Internet counterbalancing the loss of TV and newspaper freedom are wholly bogus. Paul Goble reports:

Despite reports about the expansion of Internet use in Russia, more than half of that country’s urban residents over age 12 have never gone online, and more than a third have never used a computer, global figures which set Russia apart from Western countries but ones that conceal deep divisions within the Russian Federation in the electronic world.

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